These sounds are for a series of old railroad tunnels near the town of Hope. It is a very beautiful place deeply affected by histories of capital and colonization. Dynamited out of the earth over a hundred years ago as part of the Kettle Valley Railway, a sign just outside of the entrance to the tunnels describes the site as a engineering “wonder” and gives credit to the tunnel’s engineer, but not the workers who built it. The site is also just down the road from the Nestle Waters plant which extracts groundwater out of the nearby Kawkawa Lake aquifer without permit or consent from the Sto:lo Nation. My piece incorporates recordings of water echoing through the flooded tunnels, fragments of text from the didactic panel located outside of the tunnel, green-washing ad copy from the Nestle Waters website, and an ancestor worship ritual for the workers who died at that site.

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Created for The Media Arts Committee Place + Sound Residency through Vancouver Co-op Radio